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Comment by CogitoCogito | Hacker News Reader

> Secondly, I'm getting the COVID vaccine not because they believe that there is a high risk of getting serious COVID myself, but to help others -- some at-risk people can't get the vaccine at all, and immune-suppresed people are still at significant risk post-vaccine (although still lower risk than without).

People not getting the vaccine who are able are being incredibly selfish. They are exercising the opposite of personal responsibility. It's your personal responsibility not the harm those around you as much as possible. I know they are mostly ignorant, but frankly I find them to be disgusting people.

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> It's your personal responsibility not the harm those around you as much as possible

Sure. But there is also a bigger responsibility to oneself. To not do things that might harm themselves.

So with that conflicting forces, it becomes a matter of opinion and perception. So it becomes no longer selfish, and just common sense.

> So with that conflicting forces, it becomes a matter of opinion and perception. So it becomes no longer selfish, and just common sense.

All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine. It's not common sense to avoid it. It's highly irrational. If people are really concerned with not harming themselves, they _will_ get vaccinated.

>All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine.

No, at some point you are trusting some external entities. You trust the information because you trust the entities that provide it.

When you say that someone else is irrational, you are doing that because that person does not share your trust. And to that person, in all probability, what you are doing might be irrational.

In the end, I think no one have the right to impose their standard of trust on to anyone else.

You don't have the right to simply ignore all the research going into this and be treated seriously.

But I guess believe whatever you want if it makes you feel better.

>You don't have the right to simply ignore all the research going into this and be treated seriously.

Replace "research" with "stuff a bunch of people you believe say", and the situation will become much more clear.

Don't think that I don't understand the banal point you're trying to make.

Try https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27817926

What point are you trying to make by linking that post? It's not even about the same subject. There may very well be not very much information supporting covid passes for restaurants, but what does that have to do with covid vaccinations? There is an enormous amount of information there.

E.g. here is a point you made that doesn't even remotely apply here:

> If you do an experiment that very few people in the world is able to replicate, because it is hard or due to lack of resources, then the rest of the world have to trust you.

These vaccines have been taken by _millions_ of people. They have been given by many different independent organizations. So yeah this doesn't even apply at all.

> The trust of people should be won, research by research, not authority by authority, and the non-requirement of mandates goes along automatically with that idea.

Essentially all the research points towards the vaccines being much much better than the disease. It's your choice to stick your head in the sand if you so wish, but no one need respect your decision. You're not somehow wise simply due to your being contrarian.

You don't have to respect me. But you have to respect the fact that trust in "science" is fundamentally different from trust in "scientists".

I think this is really a case of self righteous indignation. There are people who truly believe you must take the vaccine, and nothing will convince them otherwise, but more importantly, If you say no you won’t take the vaccine, they take it as a personal attack on their beliefs. In other words: how dare you say no to what I want you to do.

Honestly I don't take it as a personal attack. I just find people unnecessarily forgoing it to be selfish and stupid.

Not trusting private companies that proved many times to be putting their shareholders interests before the public good by forging false research, generating opioid epidemics and bribing politicians and committees is the opposite of being selfish and stupid.

On the contrary being this naive...

Fortunately, being forced to believe everything scientists say is neither a law nor a responsibility. And just as well because they routinely contradict themselves or turn out to have been lying. See: the denunciation of the lab leak theory by Daszak and other virologists, which successfully suppressed this obvious common sense idea for a year. So in fact people do have that "right".

Lying? You mean changing their understanding of something new as more information becomes available? That's how science works they use the best info available, and change their understanding as more info becomes available.

No new information came out to prove the lab leak hypothesis. They just lied about it to cover the financing of their gain of function research.

They didn't change their understanding with new information, they asserted with 100% confidence that the lab leak idea was a ridiculous conspiracy theory, back when there was simply no intellectual justification for that assertion whatsoever, whilst lying (yes, lying) in their conflict of interest statement about their actual conflicts of interest. The man who coordinated it all refused to sign his own "open letter" to avoid arousing suspicion!

Even today, in their newest letter, they are still trying to obfuscate the real situation and are certainly not apologizing for their prior stance.

At any rate, this claim that scientists are never dishonest or wrong, they just "update their beliefs" as more information becomes available, is getting very tedious. That's not what they're doing. "Science" is constantly bombarding our political leaders with wildly extreme statements delivered not just with 100% confidence, but the assertion that you aren't even allowed to disagree because it's a "scientific consensus". People read the papers and point out that they're making false assumptions or are otherwise pseudo-scientific, but they're suppressed and ignoring. Then when that "consensus" turns out to have been completely wrong a bunch of apologists appear to explain that scientists can never be wrong by definition.

Well, guess what? If a certain type of person constantly make confident statements as a group and insists reasoned disagreement is illegitimate, then is repeatedly proven to be wrong, all their statements become seen as less reliable. As a group.

> It's highly irrational

> All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine.*

* : for the population cohort above approximately 50 years old or a BMI greater than 30.

For better or for worse (for society), it appears healthy-weight people under 50 making the choice to not get vaccinated on a calculus of myocarditis, menstrual complications, blood clotting, and various other longer-term risks are, in fact, not being "highly irrational"

> For better or for worse (for society), it appears healthy-weight people under 50 making the choice to not get vaccinated on a calculus of myocarditis, menstrual complications, blood clotting, and various other longer-term risks are, in fact, not being "highly irrational"

I'd be curious to read source of the statistics you're referring to (i.e. what rates of these complications you see and how they compare to the complications of covid itself in the same age groups).

I think a lot of people just lack the education and context that you have, and so don't come to the same conclusion. Just 25min ago, I was in favor of getting vaccinated myself, but didn't understand why I should care about other people getting vaccinated too. And I'm not a bigot (I hope) or a person more ignorant than the average. If you believe this to be true, I think we can agree that it's probably fair to at least assume ignorance instead of vileness to the vast majority of vaccine-skeptic folks.

Especially if you consider the social landscape in the USA, where having beliefs misaligned with your in-group's is extremely damaging. It doesn't leave a lot of room for people to exercise independent thought and climb out of their ignorance.

I don't disagree with you that it's a lack of education and context, but I personally don't accept that as an excuse. Information about vaccination is totally ubiquitous. Being ignorant of this is just not okay. So no after a year and half of inundation of information explaining these basic fact I honestly am disgusted that people still hold these beliefs. I basically lose faith in society because of it.

As an aside, I never called you (or anyone else I was referring to) a bigot.

> As an aside, I never called you (or anyone else I was referring to) a bigot.

I didn't mean to claim that you did, but after re-reading the two sentences, I can see how it could be read as such. Sorry for the confusion!

It's people's personal responsibility to not harm themselves, too.

Indeed, and as the vaccines do very little harm compared to the virus, it's definitely a good thing to get vaccinated. Especially as we are now getting the fuller picture that covid can lead to last lung and brain damage.

I am not so sure. Some side-effects do take time to manifest. They just started talking about how teens get heart issues from it and so forth. We did not know this before either, nor did we know about the AstraZeneca's blood clots. Some take longer time though. We simply do not know. Anyone leaning towards "it is safe" and "it is not safe" is silly, because we just simply have no idea, you cannot claim either for certain.

> Especially as we are now getting the fuller picture that covid can lead to last lung and brain damage.

Yes, we are just now getting the fuller picture of COVID-19 that it can lead to this and that. The very same can happen to the vaccines, and it is actually happening to some of these vaccines.

> They just started talking about how teenage boys get enlarged heart from it and so forth

Inflammation/swelling of the heart, not enlarging, very rare given the number of shots that have been rolled out, and people recover pretty quickly. Definitely a concern, not a showstopper.

> We did not know this before either, nor did we know about the AstraZeneca's blood clots.

Again, an incredibly low risk and less risk than harm from the virus.

> we just simply have no idea.

This is not really true, we have a ton of data from this vaccine and from previous ones that can inform our expectations.

Sorry. I mean this, and this happens to children:

> A CDC committee will hear about reports of 300 cases of the heart enlargement that have happened after children were vaccinated against COVID-19. The ailment is fairly common and easily treatable.

The heart inflammation happens too, though.

---

> Again, an incredibly low risk and less risk than harm from the virus.

But that is not the point. The point is that we did not know this would be the case. Other side-effects may come up as time goes on.

> This is not really true, we have a ton of data from this vaccine and from previous ones that can inform our expectations.

Again, are you talking about the mRNA vaccines? I asked the question twice with regarding to it so I am not going to do it again here.

> Sorry. I mean this, and this happens to children:

What source are you quoting there? I can find that line in an abc news feed, but no attribution and nothing much else about it. Every other source seems to be talking about inflammation of one sort or another (myocarditis or pericarditis), primarily in young men, very rarely and easily recoverable.

> The point is that we did not know this would be the case

We are learning all the time, that's true, but these side effects are very rare, and are becoming visible due to the large scale of the rollout. It doesn't fundamentally change the calculus, especially when we are now learning that the disease itself can cause lasting lung and brain damage.

> I asked the question twice with regarding to it so I am not going to do it again here.

See my other answers then.

> What source are you quoting there? I can find that line in an abc news feed, but no attribution and nothing much else about it. Every other source seems to be talking about inflammation of one sort or another (myocarditis or pericarditis), primarily in young men, very rarely and easily recoverable.

I cannot find the source where I found it first, but that could be the case that they confused the two, I am not sure. Some are talking about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In any case, it can lead to chronically enlarged heart, which is dilated cardiomyopathy. Whatever.

> We are learning all the time, that's true, but these side effects are very rare, and are becoming visible due to the large scale of the rollout. It doesn't fundamentally change the calculus, especially when we are now learning that the disease itself can cause lasting lung and brain damage.

I suppose continuing discussing this is not very useful. If there are long-term side-effects, then we will know about them. If there are no long-term side-effects, same story.

> I am not so sure. Some side-effects do take time to manifest.

You're being irrational. It's true side-effects can take time to manifest. It's also true that problems due to the disease also can manifest. Taken together the fact that _something_ can possibly happen in the future gives you _no_ information today. For example, one of the side-effects of the vaccine that might manifest might be that you're _healthier_.

So yeah if you take the possibility of negative side effects, but not positive side-effects, you are being irrational. Said in another way, if you are taking statements devoid of information ("something can happen with some likelihood in the future"), you are being irrational.

All actual current information points overwhelmingly to the fact that the disease (even considering that not everyone will get it) is much worse than the vaccinations. That is information. That information points to one conclusion and it's not "wait forever and see what happens".

Personally I have been exposed to COVID-19 at the hospital on a regular basis, and I have been quarantined before with people who were positive. It does not seem to pose such a risk that you are talking about to me. I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder, too. This is my personal experience and case.

Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.

> Personally I have been exposed to COVID-19 at the hospital on a regular basis, and I have been quarantined before with people who were positive. It does not seem to pose such a risk that you are talking about to me. I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder, too. This is my personal experience and case.

There's nothing scientific about any of that. You could have some natural immunity. You could also simply have been lucky. You might never be infected. You might also someday die from the disease. This is entirely anecdotal and basically useless information.

> Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.

People shouldn't exclude that from the list of possibilities. But people _should not_ take it into account with their decision-making. If they are going to give weight to the future possibility of negative side-effects coming to light, they should also give weight to the future possibility that positive side-effects may come to light.

Said simply, there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now".

> There's nothing scientific about any of that. You could have some natural immunity. You could also simply have been lucky. You might never be infected. You might also someday die from the disease. This is entirely anecdotal and basically useless information.

Not for me though it is not, and that is the only reason I mentioned it, that there are such occurrences, too. Whether or not you believe me, well, that is up to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. :) I did add "personal experience", so yes, of course, it is anecdotal.

> there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now"

OK, time will tell regardless.

> Not for me though it is not, and that is the only reason I mentioned it, that there are such occurrences, too. Whether or not you believe me, well, that is up to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. :)

I never said I don't believe you. I just said there was nothing scientific in your reasoning. It's completely obvious that not all people get covid that are exposed to people. I've also been exposed to covid and not been infected. But it's just anecdotal information. I could get covid and die just the same. Drawing any conclusions off of these individual occurrence is not very intelligent.

Why I was mentioning that is because I personally would not like to get the vaccine because: I am in my twenties, I have an immunological autoimmune disorder (and I recently developed allergies, to my luck), and I have not caught COVID-19 despite constant exposure to it.

Does it sound a good enough reason for not getting vaccinated?

I don't think you should take into account the fact that you haven't gotten it despite being exposed. But yeah if you have a disorder that increases the likelihood for complications of course you should take that into account. (I also presume you've spoken to doctors about this.)

But none of that has to do with the issue that something may happen in the future. You are making your choices with the information you have _now_.

I suppose it is possible that some people may be more immune to COVID-19 than others. I am curious about this. I hope there will be research on this, but that is just for my curiosity.

By the way, something related: I cannot get a job because I am not vaccinated. No one cares here about people who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. It is tough.

For Americans: https://www.axios.com/republicans-coronavirus-vaccines-discr...

> Republicans push to ban "discrimination" against unvaccinated people

I am sure many people are against it, but if we push people to get the vaccine because of society and its people, then surely they should care about those who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. They are currently unable to get a job here.

I mean it basically _has_ to be true. We all have different bodies. We are have different levels of health. We are of different ages. I find the question highly interesting as well and it might very well be that you or I never will get the disease regardless of vaccination. In fact I hope that that's the case for both of us. But it doesn't change the fact that it isn't reasonable to assume it's true just by our experiences. There are probably an enormous number of people just like us that one day get covid after a year of presumed exposures.

It might be genetic as no one on my mother's side got COVID-19, and a lot of family members on my dad's side got it. It is interesting. Even my dad's mother got it and they do not visit anyone nor get visited, only the GP visited them to give them the vaccine, and they got COVID-19 a week later.

It might be genetic and it might be anything else. It might just be dumb luck. We should expect this sort of thing to happen to people based on pure randomness alone. You should never expect to win the lottery. But you should expect _someone_ to win very often. If you were to win, it wouldn't be evidence that you somehow are luckier than others.

> By the way, something related: I cannot get a job because I am not vaccinated. No one cares here about people who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. It is tough.

I _do_ care. Which is why I find those who choose unnecessarily not to get the vaccine for unspecified and irrational fears all the more unforgivable. Their selfish irrationality is despicable.

This is ridiculous. The body as anything in nature is always struggling to stay in balance. To maintain this balance it had millions of years of evolution to optimize strategies that counteract external and internals effects. But in general the chances are much higher for a neutral/bad result in case of an external intervention for which our body was never put in contact before (not even in past generations as in the case of lipid nano particles).

In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons). You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).

I honestly don't understand your post.

> But in general the chances are much higher for a neutral/bad result in case of an external intervention for which our body was never put in contact before (not even in past generations as in the case of lipid nano particles).

What is this even saying? The virus is external to the body. The vaccines are external to the body as well. Study after study shows that the side-effects of the vaccine are lower than the issues caused by the disease.

> In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons). You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).

It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already. But yeah if your point is that there are many people who for cultural/societal/ignorance/etc. reasons act irrationally, the of course that's true. I just don't understand why you're pointing it out.

> What is this even saying? The virus is external to the body. The vaccines are external to the body as well. Study after study shows that the side-effects of the vaccine are lower than the issues caused by the disease.

Saying that the virus is dangerous doesn't make the vaccine safe in the long term. You might be right, but you have no basis to suppose it's safe in the long run. You are just betting it because tv told you so.

> It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already.

You are talking about possible future unknown effects. No it hasn't been proven at all. They aren't even looking for possible long term damage.

Anyway they downplay it in the leaflet but its there: "The COVID-19 vaccine has gone through the same clinical trials and safety checks as all other licensed vaccines, however the vaccine is new and long-term side effect information is limited."

https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/newsfeatures/covid19-up...

> Anyway they downplay it in the leaflet but its there

The bullshit you have to sign before receiving the vaccine here is not downplaying anything here at least, but not that it stops people from signing it; they might as well just sign their rights to health care away altogether.

We literally have to sign our rights away for compensation in case something happens to us due to the vaccine, ANY time in the future. If you have complications from the vaccine, you cannot sue anyone, and you cannot get compensation from anyone.

They tell you straight that it is a new vaccine and we have no information with regarding to its safety, especially long-term, and that you are receiving the vaccine at your own risk, and that you are on your own if something bad happens.

How sketchy is that? More than 5.6 million people signed it. If needed, I will dig it up and translate the entire thing, but I think it is obvious what it is about. :)

> Saying that the virus is dangerous doesn't make the vaccine safe in the long term. You might be right, but you have no basis to suppose it's safe in the long run. You are just betting it because tv told you so.

I'm not supposing it's safe in the long term. I'm supposing _nothing_ about the long term because we don't have that information. Maybe it is not safe in the long term. We'll find out some day I guess. Maybe it will lead to unexpected health _benefits_ in the long term? Who knows? So why would you weigh the potential dangers over any other potential advantages of taking it?

Anyway here are two serious questions to you:

1. Specifically how long is long enough before you'd consider the vaccine safe (compared of course to all the problems that can be caused by not taking the vaccine).

2. Do you feel ashamed allowing your fellow citizens to take on this potential risk and you forgoing when it helps end the pandemic for you and them? (Feel free to ignore this question if you are vaccinated, but are just being argumentative.)

1. Normal vaccines take 5 to 10 years to be approved. Covid mrna therapies have been rushed and they aren't even experimenting it correctly. The only data they are taking is what goes in the VAERS database, but if you even try to mention those numbers you get the usual answer that those numbers are meaningless. So tell me: if someone wants to know what the benefit/risk ratio of the therapy is, where should the numbers be found?

2. You cannot force people into taking experimental therapies even if you tricked half of the population into taking them.

> how teenage boys get enlarged heart from it

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/17/1007447...

" 7 million U.S. teens and preteens (ages 12 through 17) had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine" [...] "more than 300 cases of heart inflammation have been documented [...] mostly in teens and young adults between 12 and 39 years old"

Assuming every single one of those 400 (rounding up) cases was between 12 and 17, that's 400 out of 7 million or 0.0057%.

"The rate seen after these vaccines is slightly higher than the "background" rate. [...] Many of the events reported turn out to be coincidental — not caused by a vaccine."

Which could well mean that only a handful of these cases are actually down to the vaccine, no?

And it's not even that drastic a problem; mainly just scary - "In a case study of seven teenagers who got myocarditis following vaccination published last week in the journal Pediatrics, all seven got better after routine treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs."

[edit: forgot to round one of my 300s up to 400]

My source of skepticism on such reports is my own Government that makes people lie about the COVID-19 cases (we have more reported than actual) because it funds our hospitals and our Government in general. We have a huge history of taking EU money in such a way, and it is pretty much incentivized. Our president told us a few months ago that COVID-19 will go away during summer (tourism), and will return in September. We are also going to produce our own vaccines, so they will be trash-talking others when it is done (again, we (or they) have done such things often).

This is not the case. The US CDC is heavily backlogged and reports of vaccine injuries aren't being processed in a timely manner, so we don't actually know how many people are being injured by them. We only know lower bounds.

If you look at VAERS then it's clear that this is by multiple orders of magnitude the most dangerous vaccine ever deployed.

https://swprs.org/us-vaccine-deaths-increasing-rapidly/

"The latest weekly US VAERS update added a shocking 2,083 post-vaccination deaths – by far the largest weekly increase to date – raising the total of reported post-vaccination deaths to 9,048. Not all of these 2,083 deaths occurred within a week, as there is a very significant reporting backlog. In total, close to 1,000 post-vaccination miscarriages, more than 3,000 heart attacks, about 7,500 disabilities, close to 20,000 severe allergic reactions, and close to 1,000 cases of heart muscle inflammation in people under 25 have already been reported to VAERS."

> raising the total of reported post-vaccination deaths to 9,048

Even if all those deaths were directly attributable to the vaccine (and that is unlikely), the US has vaccinated 159M people - that's 0.0057% or 99.9943% safe.

If you want to include all the illnesses as well to bring it up to 41,500 incidents, that's still only 0.026% or 99.974% safe.

For what is almost certainly the single biggest vaccination project in human history, with more scrutiny than any other mass medical intervention, those are pretty damn good numbers.

You're ignoring the clear evidence of large scale under-reporting.

But there's a deeper problem. Those are not good numbers because they are drastically higher than would be expected for a vaccine. A big part of the argument for getting vaccinated is that vaccines in general are "perfectly safe" and in particular that the vaccine is much safer than actually getting COVID. What this data shows is that these vaccines don't meet expectations established by prior campaigns, and that actually we have no real idea whatsoever of how dangerous they are, especially in the young.

Consider that US all cause mortality for the under 65s is still seriously above the expected baseline despite that COVID deaths have dropped to nearly zero. Something is raising mortality, and according to the largest virus surveillance programme in history combined with the laxest classification process imaginable, it isn't COVID.

> vaccines in general are "perfectly safe"

I don't think anyone has ever said that, have they? They've said things like "vaccines are pretty safe" and "the risk of something going wrong is tiny compared with the risk of being unvaccinated", sure, but I doubt any medical professional has said "perfectly safe"?

> Those are not good numbers because they are drastically higher than would be expected for a vaccine.

Probably the smallpox vaccination program is the only one even vaguely comparable in size to this and, yeah, that had many fewer deaths (68 in the US in 10 years, I think, but I couldn't find out how many vaccinations were actually done.)

But then smallpox is a much easier thing to a) spot, b) treat, c) isolate people from, and d) create a vaccine for.

> Consider that US all cause mortality for the under 65s is still seriously above the expected baseline

Do you have a URL for that?

The world is a big place my friend. Here's the British Society for Immunology saying it: [1]

"These vaccines are perfectly safe and are extremely effective at preventing serious illness from these infectious diseases"

Pennsylvanian officials: [2]

"PA (WBNG) -- Despite natural concern and curiosity over the coronavirus vaccine, Pennsylvania officials held a scientific panel Thursday to explain the vaccines are perfectly safe, even for children."

A professor advising the UK government via the primary COVID vaccination committee: [3]

"There is the concern that what’s happening in Europe might make people in the UK less confident in the AstraZeneca vaccine, unnecessarily so, because it’s perfectly safe"

Maybe you don't consider an academic to be a medical professional, so here's a doctor in San Diego saying the same thing: [4]

"“There’s no reason to think that a 16-year-old or 17-year-old is going to have a reaction that an 18-year-old is going to have. I think it’s perfectly safe,” Sawyer told ABC 10News."

Re: mortality. Go to https://www.usmortality.com/ and click the 25-44 and 45-64 age check boxes, the graphs will then appear.

[1] https://www.immunology.org/celebrate-vaccines/public-engagem...

[2] https://wbng.com/2021/06/17/pa-officials-insist-vaccine-is-s...

[3] https://inews.co.uk/news/health/oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-s...

[4] https://www.10news.com/news/coronavirus/san-diego-doctor-say...

[1] and [2] are equivocal - [1] isn't about the C19 vaccines and [2] doesn't contain "perfectly" in the actual reported content.

[3] and [4], though, I stand corrected, they do say "perfectly safe".

Yes, but my original claim was:

A big part of the argument for getting vaccinated is that vaccines in general are "perfectly safe"

I was describing the scientific establishment's description of all vaccines, not just for C19.

You're right about [2], it may be an interpolation by journalists. Still, it's ascribed to them and I doubt any of those officials complained about this characterisation.

At any rate, this is a bit of an odd thing to be debating. "Perfectly safe" is a common turn of phrase in English. I doubt anyone who says it means it literally, and I didn't intend it to be read as such. It can be taken as a synonym for "so safe it's not worth anyone worrying about it".

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